Madge Stamp was right, her view now unobstructed. As Billingham Synthonia’s tea hut supremo supposed in last week’s column, the Synners’ now-endangered cantilever stand really is Britain’s oldest and may well have been the first ever.

“Cantilever” is defined as “allowing for overhanging structure without external bracing” but also applies to everything from bike brakes to the spacewalk at the Grand Canyon.

The first is widely reckoned to have been at Scunthorpe United’s Old Show Ground, the stand opened some time in 1958 and the stadium abandoned 30 years later.

The second is claimed to have been at Hillsborough, opened in August 1961 by FA secretary Stanley Rous, who’d also been at Synners’ official opening on September 6 1958. Pillar talk – or, strictly, the absence of it – is that the stand had been used for some time before that.

The Hillsborough stand was 110m long, had 10,008 seats and cost £150,000, the sort of money for which Darlington might have had 250 extra seats today. These days you can buy a cantilever on Amazon.

Sainsbury’s deli counter now marks the centre spot at the Old Show Ground. Goodness knows what’s next for Synthonia’s ground but what if they made that historic old stand a listed building? That would be an interesting development, wouldn’t it?

As we supposed a fortnight back, 80-year-old former Newcastle United winger Gordon Hughes – famously the Fatfield Flyer – was cajoled into addressing last week’s Age UK men’s breakfast in Durham. The column couldn’t make it, Shildon tunnelling, Paul Hodgson did. The Flyer even recalled that he’d been invited to join England trials, but broke his spine three days before training. “He was absolutely brilliant,” says Hodgy.

Raising a glass to the North Yorkshire and South Durham Cricket League’s 125th anniversary season, the column two weeks ago reported league president Chris West’s belief that it was the world’s second oldest, after the Birmingham League.

Others demur. What of the recently deceased Cleveland League, asks Martin Birtle, formed in the 1890s but said to have been an amalgamation of the East and West Cleveland Leagues – both formed in 1885.

The Birmingham League was 1888, the Alnwick and District (no less) batted from 1889-2014 and the Huddersfield and District was born in 1892, a year before the NYSD.

Its website also suggests that the Harrogate and District Evening League is “probably” the world’s oldest evening league but into that dark night it’s safest not to venture.

Seldom derailed, Gresley Observer editor Chris Nettleton seeks readers’ help with a 1950 football conundrum.

The magazine’s produced by the (Sir Nigel) Gresley Society, dedicated to the great locomotive engineer. The new issue carries a photograph of a “humble” class J39 steam engine, said in the caption to be heading a soccer special downhill out of Harrogate station some time in April 1950.

The trip was organised by Harrogate RA, still playing, but where was it going and what precisely was the date? It’s not helpful, Chris concedes, that the train was actually headed uphill into the station.

Gresley Observer reader Mike Williams surmises that it was the weekend of April 15, the RA off to join 134,000 others at the Scotland-England international at Hampden – a goal by Roy Bentley of Chelsea giving England a 1-0 win.

The Northern Echo had nothing of the train, the front page photograph that Saturday illustrating promising Spennymoor artist Norman Cornish, still a Dean Bank miner, showing a new painting to his six-year-old daughter.

A bit of research at this end initially suggests that the Harrogate boys might have been off to watch the Bishop Auckland v Willington FA Amateur Cup final on April 22, but since around 20 specials were booked to leave Co Durham it seems unlikely that British Railways had so much as a third class guards van spare.

Can any suggest more specifically what the RA away day was all about?

….and finally, last week’s column sought the identity of the 14 post-war footballers who’d been capped for England while with Sunderland. Despite valiant efforts by Arnold Alton and George Cram, the former at 6 30am, only former Football League assistant referee David Oliver, in Darlington, managed the full set.

Chronologically, they were Len Shackleton, Willie Watson, Colin Grainger, Stan Anderson, Dave Watson, Tony Towers, Nick Pickering, Gavin McCann, Michael Gray, Kevin Phillips, Darren Bent, Jordan Henderson, Fraizer Campbell and Jermaine Defoe.

Don Clarke, who asked the question, supposed Campbell the particularly tricky one. Signed from Manchester United for £3.5m in 2009, he’d scored just six league goals in four injury-hit seasons when named in the squad for a friendly against Holland. He came on as an 80th minute sub – now with Crystal Palace, his international career has to date lasted ten minutes.

Nigel Brierley today invites readers to name the last cricketer to take all ten wickets in a County Championship innings – another North-East connection. We pad up again next week.